A Thirst Merchants Selection

This month we highlight a few of the wines we bring in directly. These are hand-made wines from quite small, independent, artisanal winemakers we discovered and whose wines we're especially proud to represent as “A Thirst Merchants Selection.” 

The wines of Camille & Mathias Marquet and Francois Saint-Lo are honest, limited, small-batch -- so if you find that you really like them, BUY MORE before they disappear! This is the first time they are available in the US.

Mathias Marquet

Chateau Lestignac, located in the Southwest of France in Bergerac, was almost sold when Camille and Mathias Marquet convinced their family to let them take it over. Their first vintage was 2008 and they immediately began by farming organically. They’re now certified organic by Ecocert and also apply biodynamic treatments.  

After just one vintage of trying to listen to the advice of an oenologist, Camille and Matthias realized that they simply needed to trust their own instincts. The result: true Thirst wines with great purity and freshness but also deeply reflective of their terroir. As Mathias has eloquently put it: “Ce qui nous intéresse, c’est que le vin ait une personnalité.” [What interests us is wine that has a personality.] Their wines demonstrate that distinctive and profound wines can be made in lesser-known areas like Bergerac. 

LESTIGNAC Les Abeilles des Collinettes 2012 
Made from 60% Sauvignon Blanc and 40% Semillon, this fantastic white wine is lively on the palate with a chalky limestone minerality, pleasing citrus notes, and mouthwatering crispness. $18/bottle.

LESTIGNAC Le Rouge et Le Noir 2012 
This vivid natural smoky red is a true wine of pleasure. It’s composed of 95% Cabernet Franc and 5% Merlot from grapes grown on clay soil. $18/bottle.

Francois Saint-Lo

Francois Saint-Lo is a young winemaker whose first vintage was 2012. He was born in Normandy and his family was not involved with winemaking. However, he became passionately interested in working the vines and making wine and apprenticed with Olivier Cousin, among others. He has managed to buy a piece of land in the Anjou region of the Loire Valley with troglodyte caves, get a few hectares of vines, and immediately turn out stellar wines. Later this year we will also have his Chenin Blanc, Grolleau, Gamay as well as white and rose pet-nats. Francois’ wines achieve an elegant balance and a taste of place that gives us a feeling of deja vu. Tasting his wines we are reminded why we fell in love with the Loire in the first place. 

FRANCOIS SAINT-LO On L’Aime Nature 2012 
We discovered Francois last year when we tasted samples of his wines at the Raw Wine Fair in London that had not yet finished fermenting and immediately committed to bringing in his wines. 2012 is his first vintage. His patience and gentleness is reflected in the stunning purity of his wines. His Cabernet Franc has a liveliness on the palate, there's a beautiful honesty to it, and gentle tannins. Aaron Ayscough in his excellent blog, Not Drinking Poison in Paris, describes it as "shimmeringly elegant, a real see-through dress of a red wine." $22/bottle.

Eruptions: Chiara Vigo and Frank Cornelissen

JANUARY WINE CLUB OFFERING! Sign up now to get the following two wines for $50.

Etna, Oh Etna, or Raw and Rawer

This month we take you to Sicily by offering you two red wines that are informed by the eruptions of the volcano that is Mount Etna. These distinctive wines, made from grapes grown in volcanic soil, are made with a deep respect for tradition by two strong personalities who bring a fresh perspective to this ancient winegrowing region: Frank Cornelissen, a Belgian who moved to Sicily to make wine, and Chiara Vigo who returned from her studies, in Bologna, Venice and Paris, to make wine at home.

Frank Cornelissen at The Raw Wine Fair in 2013

Frank Cornelissen makes his wine high up on the slopes of Mount Etna. He chose this location first and foremost because he feels Etna is a great terroir for the indigenous Nerello Mascalese grape; that in this place he could make wine that rivals the best Burgundies and Barolos. Frank in fact feels that Nerello possesses the fruit of Pinot Noir and the dry tannins of Nebbiolo. A sort of Zen Master, Frank believes that we can never fully understand nature and all of its complexities and paradoxes. He doesn't use any chemical additions or treatments. He practices polyculture on his 15-hectare estate, growing olives for oil, buckwheat and fruit in addition to the grapes for his wine. 

Grapes are harvested by hand, from mid-October to early November, in order to get the ripest fruit. They then undergo meticulous selection and any unripe or damaged grapes are discarded. In the cellar, the winemaking is completely natural, with no yeasts, sulfites or chemicals added to the wines. The wines are then fermented with their skins in small neutral tubs to insure stable temperatures. After fermentation, the wines are pressed and stored in neutral vessels, big tanks for the early-bottled wines and epoxy-lined anforas buried in volcanic rock for the more tannic wines. 

FRANK CORNELISSEN MUNJABEL CONTADINO 10 2012
Contadino is Frank’s homage to the farmer wines of the area. It’s a field-blend of 70-80% Nerello Mascalese with all kinds of local varietals from his old-vine vineyards: Alicante Bouschet, Minella Nera, Uva Francesa, Sangiovese, Minella Bianco and Insolia. It’s a dangerously drinkable wine that has the character of Etna: fragrant, profound, tannic but fruity.

Chiara Vigo

Chiara Vigo is the winemaker at her family’s estate, Fattorie Romeo del Castello. She was a small child in 1981 when Mount Etna erupted. Her parents sent her away to safety but they stayed to monitor the situation. They watched as the lava flow headed directly for their house; then it miraculously shifted and went toward the river instead, destroying a substantial amount of their property but not the full-on tragedy it could have been.

FATTORIE ROMEO DEL CASTELLO ALLEGRACORE ETNA ROSSO 2010

Chemicals have never been used here and Chiara continues to work in the manner of her ancestors. Salvo Foti, an influential Sicilian winemaker, has been a mentor. He encouraged her to take over winemaking duties from him, impressing upon her how special her vineyards are, and reminding her that she was born to be the winemaker at Fattorie Romeo Del Castello.

Allegracore is the name of the parcel the grapes come from and it means happy heart. The wine is primarily Nerello Mascalese aged in stainless steel. It has depth and also a certain elegance. The tannins are there but gentle on the palate.

La Gramiere! Why La Gramiere.

Amy Lillard and Matt Kling

When we visited London in May to attend the Raw Wine Fair we met up again with Amy from La Gramiere who was showing her wines. We have always admired what she and her husband Matt did. 

Matt and Amy met at the Kermit Lynch retail shop in Berkeley. Amy worked at the store and Matt was a customer. In 2005 they left the Bay Area and moved to a small town in the Southern Rhone 20 minutes outside of Avignon, where they bought 3.75 hectares of vineyards in the Cotes du Rhone, and a small house, and started making wine. 

Well not exactly. Long story short they did make the wine, but not without a lot of sacrifice and a lot of determination. They do almost all of the work themselves, with occasional help from their friends and family at harvest. The grapes are hand-picked, without anything added or taken away. They cultivate without herbicides or pesticides and vinify in concrete vats with naturally occurring yeasts. The result: a true wine of place made mostly of Grenache with a little Syrah and Mourvedre. 

It's lively and fresh, peppery, with supple tannins. Originally imported by Kermit Lynch, Amy told us her wines were currently unavailable in New York. So we wondered how we could do the situation justice and decided to bring them in ourselves! Hence our first Thirst Merchants Selection is born. The La Gramiere Green Label 2011 is just $15/bottle and $13.50/bottle when you buy a case (in store only). 

Going forward we will share some of our other finds with you. We will soon have an e-commerce site up and running. As you may know by dropping by our little store in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, we love those wines that are made in such tiny quantities that essentially if you're not aware that they're currently available you might miss out!

THIRST TOTE BAGS ARE BACK!

For a limited time, get one of our classic totes FREE when you purchase 6 or more bottles.

WE DELIVER.

Real flavors beat fake flavors every time.

Long before we opened our wine store in 2006 we were constantly on the lookout for interesting, delicious wines that we could drink that tasted like they came from somewhere specific. We soon learned that finding simple, honest wine is not so simple. It was this persistent thirst for a taste of place that finally drove us to open our shop.

The desire to find these kinds of wines went hand-in-hand with the food we wanted to eat. We don’t eat industrially produced overly processed foods so why would we want to drink wines made that way, which most people don’t realize is the norm -- that most wine, like most food, is made with tons of chemicals primarily to satisfy the bottom line.

Like many of you we choose to eat minimally processed food not just because it tastes better and gives us more pleasure, but also because it makes us feel good once having eaten it. It’s the same with wine and the proof is found in the bottles. A real wine has real flavors that occasionally surprise and challenge us to come to terms with it, to struggle to describe it, because it’s not made with fake flavors. Real flavors beat fake flavors every time.

Of course it would take a lot less effort to sell easily recognized brands but that’s not what we want to do. We don’t want to sell brands. We want to work with people we like that we feel make wines that say something unique in small batches without additives or chemicals that consistently delight and sometimes amaze. Wines that go with food, have a sense of place, and are meant for thirst.

Which is why last month we attended RAW – The Artisan Wine Fair in London. RAW was filled with talented artisanal winemakers from around the world who make, in the words of the organizers, “wines that are pure, kind to the planet, very possibly better for your health, and best of all they’re absolutely delicious.” There we saw a lot of familiar faces and many, many new ones. It was a really exciting two-day event and you’ll be seeing many new things in the store reflecting what struck our fancy. The London food and wine scene at the moment is really exciting. 

London Calling

Back from London, which we visited to attend the Raw Wine Fair, a wine expo featuring natural winemakers from around the world. The fair was exciting and the London wine and food scene is vibrant. Some of the things and places that inspire us...

Day 1